Home » Other Web Resources (Page 8)
Category Archives: Other Web Resources
So you want a Store…
Much like my previous post on setting up a forum site, I also think it’s best to separate a store function from the rest of your main site. The highest prize in hacking is really things like credit card records or other money oriented information–so to reduce the chances of all of your stuff getting destroyed in one shot you want to keep things separated as much as possible.
There are many stand alone store website packages out there. Quite a few are based on the grand daddy of open source commerce: OsCommerce. Zencart is an adaption of OsCommerce to be a bit easier to set up than the original. It honestly used to be somewhat hard to find a open source shopping cart program, but with the explosion in open source development it’s now actually difficult to figure out the reverse: which of the millions are actually any good.
I actually like a surprising choice: X-cart, which is NOT open source. But it has almost every benefit. It’s very inexpensive ($200), they give you the source code, allow you to make mods, and provide support and free upgrades forever (and have actually been producing many). It also has one of the best things I’ve ever seen in ANY website development software: Webmaster Mode. This is an Ajax sort of thing that once activated lets the admin literally click any text element of the site–which opens an editor box and allows instant editing of the content. You can speed through setting up your site in record time.
Of course the absolute easiest choice is to set up a Paypal or Amazon store, but those make you look kinda crappy in the long run. Whatever your choice, remember you need to always be on the watch for security updates, and always upgrade if there is a security issue.
Contribute To ComicPress Development
The Developers of the ComicPress theme for WordPress are looking for feedback about what features people want for the next version of the theme. If you are using this theme or are considering it you should let them know what you want.
link: http://mindfaucet.com/comicpress/2007/06/03/comicpress-21-development/
Webcomic Community at Transplant Comics
The next in my series of Webcomic sites using WordPress is Transplant Comics, where you don’t get just a comic, but a whole community of comics! One of the best aspect of WordPress is it’s flexible ability to adapt to whatever you need it to be– In this case a portal site for a large group of webcomics.
Comic Navigation Arrows Plugin
It’s pretty traditional on a webcomic site to have some sort of navigation system for the comic archive. In most cases it’s as simple as a next/previous set of arrows, and a first/last link setup to go to the beginning and end of the comic run. WordPress doesn’t really have the second set of links standard, and the regular next/previous links will go through all of your posts regardless of whether you posted a comic that day or not. The MyComic plugin adds the ability to tag each of your news posts as to whether it was associated with a comic and then creates it’s own navigation arrows to move through them and a first/last link. It’s not too hard to use, but does require you to remember to use a part of WordPress that isn’t normally used by most people (the custom key/value area). Great idea for ComicPress users.
link: http://borkweb.com/story/wordpress-plugin-mycomic-browser
Where’s All The Webcomic News Fit To Read?
Webcomics are not yet a mainstream news item on cnn.com, so where can you go to get information on new developments in the field? There are a wide number of blogs out there reporting and reviewing webcomics, two that I read are Fleen and Comixpedia. They also are pretty easy to submit news to (if it’s not trivial or spam), and in most cases you can expect them to post about it on their main page. It’s always good to know who’s out there and what they’re doing, especially when you are just getting started.
links: Fleen.com
Comixpedia.com